# "Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 86"
The trade winds carried the scent of frangipani across Fiji's coral reefs, where volcanic islands rose like green giants from turquoise seas and thatched bure huts clustered around village greens. Su Yao's boat glided into a lagoon, passing fishermen in outrigger canoes hauling in reef fish, until it reached a coastal village on Viti Levu. In a clearing shaded by banyan trees, a group of weavers sat cross-legged on pandanus mats, their hands moving with rhythmic force as they beat bark into thin, fibrous sheets. Their leader, a 60-year-old woman with a crown of flowers and a *sulu* (wrap skirt) made from hand-pounded bark cloth named Adi Mereseini, looked up as they approached, holding a finished *masi*—a tapa cloth adorned with geometric patterns and ancestral motifs in rich browns and blacks that seemed to pulse with island energy. "You've come for the *masi*," she said, her Fijian dialect melodic like the waves, gesturing to stacks of bark cloth drying on wooden frames.
The Fijian people have crafted *masi* for over 2,000 years, a craft intertwined with their *vanua* (land and people) identity and chiefly ceremonies. The *masi*—a cloth made from the inner bark of paper mulberry trees (*broussonetia papyrifera*)—serves as both sacred regalia and a historical record: it is presented during *i sevusevu* (gift-giving ceremonies) to chiefs, used to wrap *tapu* (sacred objects), and its patterns (*tatau*) tell stories of clan migrations and legendary battles. Each motif carries profound meaning: *kerekere* (spirals) represent eternal life, *vakaturaga* (chiefly patterns) denote status, and *magimagi* (coconut fiber designs) symbolize unity. Made by pounding bark with wooden beaters (*ike*) and decorating with plant-based dyes, each *masi* requires up to six weeks of communal work, with women singing *meke* (dance songs) to "infuse the cloth with *mana* (spiritual power)." Dyes are made from native plants: *koka* (mango bark) for brown, *vau* (hibiscus) for yellow, and *dilo* (tamanu) sap for black, with recipes guarded by *bati* (warrior clans) through oral tradition. The process begins with a *yavusa* (clan ceremony) where *kava* is offered to ancestral spirits, and only takes place during the dry season to "ensure the bark yields pure fiber." Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this communal craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored Fijian traditions while adding durability to the delicate bark fibers. But from the first conversation, it was clear that their understanding of "cultural continuity" and "innovation" was as different as the island's volcanic soil and the deep ocean floor.
Adi Mereseini's granddaughter, Alisi, a 27-year-old who managed a cultural preservation center while studying Pacific archaeology, held up a *masi* with a pattern of interlocking war clubs and fishhooks. "This is for the *installation of a new chief*," she said, tracing the motifs that affirm chiefly authority. "Our women pounded the bark during *vosota* (full moon) when the ancestors walk among us—too many warrior motifs, and it brings conflict; too few, and the chief lacks strength. You don't just make *masi*—you weave the memory of our people into bark."
Su Yao's team had brought mechanical bark beaters and synthetic dye blends, intending to mass-produce simplified *masi* patterns using their seaweed-metal blend for a "Pacific island luxury" home decor line. When Lin displayed a prototype with machine-printed spiral motifs, the women froze, their wooden *ike* beaters thudding against the stone worktable. Adi Mereseini's brother, Ratu Jone, a 65-year-old *turaga* (chief) with a whale tooth necklace (*tabua*) and a walking stick carved from sandalwood, stood and raised his hand in traditional greeting. "You think machines can capture the *veiqia* (sacred knowledge) of our grandmothers?" he said, his voice deep as the lagoon. "*Masi* carries the laughter of our women and the wisdom of our chiefs. Your metal has no laughter, no wisdom—it's a coral rock, not a living tradition."
Cultural friction deepened over materials and rituals. Fijian weavers harvest paper mulberry bark during *matanirau* (harvest festival), offering the first cuttings to the sea god Dakuwaqa to "thank him for protecting our islands." The bark is soaked in freshwater streams, where women leave shells as offerings to the water spirits, and beaten in communal circles to strengthen clan bonds. Dyes are prepared in wooden bowls carved from *vesi* (rosewood), with each color mixed by elder women while reciting genealogies to "bind the dye to our ancestors' stories." The seaweed-metal blend, despite its marine origins, was viewed as an intrusion. "Your thread comes from deep seas that swallow canoes," Adi Mereseini said, placing the sample on a *tapa* mat woven from coconut fronds. "It will never hold the *mana* of our *vanua*."
A practical crisis emerged when the metal threads reacted with the *dilo* sap dye, turning it a murky gray and causing the bark fibers to crumble. "It angers our ancestors," Alisi said, holding up a ruined swatch where the warrior pattern had disintegrated. "Our *masi* grows more sacred with each ceremony, like a *bure kalou* (temple) that shelters generations. This will decay like driftwood, breaking our connection to the past."
Then disaster struck: a powerful cyclone battered the islands, uprooting the paper mulberry groves and flooding the village's *masi* storage hut. The weavers' wooden *ike* beaters—some passed down through seven generations—were swept away, and their supply of rare *vau* dye was destroyed. With the *Bula Festival* (celebrating Fijian culture) approaching, when new *masi* is displayed in traditional dances, the community faced a crisis of both culture and continuity. Ratu Jone, performing a *sevusevu* ceremony by presenting *kava* to the storm god, blamed the team for disturbing the natural balance. "You brought something cold from foreign seas to our warm islands," he chanted, as rain drummed on the thatched roof of the village meeting house. "Now Dakuwaqa is angry, and he takes back his trees."
That night, Su Yao sat with Adi Mereseini in her *bure*, where an underground oven (*lovo*) cooked taro and *kokoda* (raw fish in coconut cream), filling the air with the scent of coconut and lime. The walls were hung with *masi* cloths and family *tanoa* (kava bowls), and a small shrine held a whale tooth and a frangipani lei. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, sipping *kava* from a wooden cup. "We came here thinking we could honor your craft, but we've only shown we don't understand its soul."
Adi Mereseini smiled, passing Su Yao a piece of *pudding* made from taro and coconut. "The cyclone is not your fault," she said. "The ocean tests us to remind us to stand together, like the *bure* walls that shelter us. My grandmother used to say that even broken bark can be mended, like a broken *yavusa* can be healed. But your thread—maybe it's a chance to show that *masi* can tell new stories, without losing our island heart. Young people buy clothes from New Zealand. We need to show them our beating still speaks to our ancestors."
Su Yao nodded, hope rising like the tide over the reef. "What if we start over? We'll help replant the paper mulberry trees with cyclone-resistant varieties, recover the lost *ike* beaters, and make new dye from surviving plants. We'll learn to beat *masi* by hand, singing your *meke* songs. We won't copy your clan patterns. Instead, we'll create new ones together—designs that merge your warrior motifs with our ocean waves, honoring both your islands and the sea. And we'll let Ratu Jone bless the metal thread with a *sevusevu* ceremony, so it carries Dakuwaqa's favor."
Alisi, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped inside, her *sulu* rustling like palm fronds. "You'd really learn to pound bark for eight hours a day? Your arms will ache, your hands will blister from the *ike* beaters."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll learn the genealogies you recite while working. Respect means knowing your family stories."
Over the next three months, the team immersed themselves in Fijian life. They helped build stone windbreaks around the new mulberry groves, their hands scraped by coral, and joined the women in communal bark-beating circles, their muscles burning from the rhythmic motion. They traveled with Ratu Jone to a remote valley to collect wild *dilo* sap, learning to identify the trees by their connection to ancestral stories. They sat cross-legged on pandanus mats, painting patterns with dye-stained fingers, as the village women sang *meke* songs about their island's creation. "Each beat must land with the same force as your heart," Adi Mereseini said, demonstrating the *ike* technique. "Too soft, and the fiber stays tough; too hard, and it breaks. Like community—strength in unity."
They learned to mix dyes in wooden bowls, their clothes stained brown and black as Alisi taught them to add coconut oil to the *dilo* sap to "make the color last like our love for the islands." "You have to paint the patterns in the order of our genealogy," she said, her brush moving in precise strokes. "Skip an ancestor, and the *mana* fades." They practiced the *tatau* stamping technique that makes Fijian *masi* distinctive, their progress slow but steady as Adi Mereseini's 85-year-old mother, Mere, who had beaten *masi* for royal ceremonies, corrected their work with a sharp eye. "The spirals must curve like our lagoon's edge," she said, her gnarled fingers tracing a line. "A straight spiral brings bad luck to fishermen."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and *dilo* dye, Lin experimented with coating the metal in a solution of *coconut wax* and *sandalwood oil*, a mixture Fijians use to preserve wooden *tanoa* bowls. The wax sealed the metal, preventing discoloration, while the oil let it bond with bark fibers—a combination Ratu Jone declared "holds the scent of our islands" after the *sevusevu* ceremony. "It's like giving the thread a Fijian soul," she said, showing Adi Mereseini a swatch where the black now glowed against the metal's subtle shimmer.
Fiona, inspired by the way Fiji's currents connect to the wider Pacific, designed a new pattern called "Warriors and Tides," merging warrior club motifs with wave patterns in seaweed-metal thread. The clubs gradually transform into ocean swells, symbolizing how Fijian warriors once navigated the vast seas. "It honors your sailors and our ocean guardians," she said, and Ratu Jone nodded, pressing his forehead to the fabric in a traditional *salaam* (blessing). "Dakuwaqa's ocean connects all islands," he said. "This cloth understands our place in it."
As the mulberry trees sprouted new leaves and the village *bure* were rebuilt, the community held a *Bula Festival* with traditional dances, fire walking ceremonies, and a *kava* ritual. They unveiled their first collaborative *masi* at the village green, where it hung between two coconut palms catching the sunlight. The cloth featured the "Warriors and Tides" pattern, its bark fibers strengthened by seaweed-metal thread that glowed like sunlight on water, and traditional geometric borders that seemed to pulse with communal energy.
Adi Mereseini draped the *masi* over Su Yao's shoulders, as the village sang a *bula* (welcome) song. "This cloth has two hearts," she said, her voice mingling with the waves. "One from our Fiji, one from your sea. But both beat for the ocean that connects us."
As the team's boat pulled away from the harbor, Alisi stood on the shore, waving a small package. Su Yao caught it as the wind lifted it into the air: a scrap of *masi* dyed black with *dilo* sap, stitched with a tiny warrior club and wave in seaweed-metal, wrapped in frangipani petals. "To remember us by," read a note in Fijian and English. "Remember that all islands are connected—like your thread and our bark."
Su Yao clutched the package as Fiji's coastline faded into the distance, the sunset painting the lagoon in hues of pink and gold. She thought of the hours spent beating bark in the communal circle, the *meke* songs that seemed to carry the voices of Fijian warriors, the way the metal thread had finally learned to move with the bark fibers. The Fijians had taught her that tradition isn't about preserving isolation—it's about honoring the connections that bind communities, letting old patterns evolve while staying rooted in the *vanua* (land and people) that defines them.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Jeju team: photos of Min-ji holding their collaborative *ttukseom* at a reef festival. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added new warriors—Fijian islands and your sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, the *lali* (wooden drum) echoed across the water, a rhythm as old as the islands themselves. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless island communities to honor, countless stories of ocean connection to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with humility—listening to the waves, honoring the weavers—the tapestry would only grow more harmonious, a testament to the beauty of all things bound by the sea.